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Browse articles in News on U.S. Constitution

Supreme Court to Weigh Colorado’s Pre-K Rules and Catholic Schools
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Colorado dispute that sits at a familiar constitutional crossroads: when a state offers public benefits to private groups, how far can it go in setting the terms without crossing the First Amendment’s protections for religious exercise? The case arises from...
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Judge: DOJ and DHS Likely Coerced Platforms To Remove ICE-Tracking Speech
A federal judge has signaled that federal officials may have crossed a constitutional line when they urged major tech companies to remove online tools used to share information about immigration enforcement activity. In a preliminary ruling, U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso found that the...
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New Jersey’s Nonprofit Squeeze Reaches the Supreme Court
There are two ways to silence a civic group. You can ban what it says. That is the blunt instrument. Courts recognize it on sight. Or you can bury it in paperwork, deadlines, disclosures, and penalties until the easiest path is to stop speaking at all. That version looks like “regulation.” It...
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When the Government Asks Apple to Censor
Most Americans understand censorship as something the government does directly. A law is passed. A speaker is fined. A publication is seized. But the Constitution has always been haunted by a more modern temptation: the government does not have to ban speech itself if it can get someone else to do...
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DOJ Seeks Wayne County’s 2024 Ballots
The U.S. Department of Justice has demanded that Wayne County, Michigan, produce materials from the November 2024 election, including all ballots along with supporting paperwork like ballot receipts and ballot envelopes. The request, delivered in an April 14 letter, gives the county 14 days to...
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Alito and Thomas Staying Put, for Now
In Washington, the loudest Supreme Court news is often the news that does not happen. Multiple sources now indicate that Justice Samuel Alito is not expected to step down this term. The term lasts until the Court’s new year begins in October. Alito, who is 76, has already hired all four law...
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Navy Seizes Iranian Ship in the Strait: War Powers and the Escalation Risk
The Strait of Hormuz is not just a narrow stretch of water. It is a pressure point where global commerce, regional rivalries, and U.S. constitutional limits collide. On April 19, 2026, U.S. Central Command released video showing the destroyer USS Spruance firing on an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel...
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When Schools Keep Gender Identity Secret From Parents
Across the country, families are learning a hard civics lesson: the most emotional school debates are often the ones with the most complicated lines of authority. Who decides what a school can keep from parents about a child’s gender identity? When does student privacy matter most? And where,...
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SCOTUS Curbs Climate Lawsuits Against Oil Companies
A growing number of climate activists and state and local governments have tried to use the courts to pressure oil and gas companies, not only through regulation, but through lawsuits that seek massive financial liability. The basic theory is straightforward: if a judge or jury can be persuaded...
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New Hampshire’s Campus Carry Fight
New Hampshire just shoved a hard question back onto the table: when you step onto a college campus, do you step out of your constitutional rights? A campus carry bill, HB 1793 , has cleared the New Hampshire House and now heads to the state Senate, where lawmakers will weigh it next. The bill is...
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Is the AR-15 Constitutionally Protected?
The Second Amendment debate has a bad habit of turning into a shouting match about modern politics instead of a serious argument about constitutional limits. This week, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon tried to drag it back to first principles, at least in the legal...
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Trump’s Truth Social Blitz and the Politics of Sacred Imagery
President Trump used Truth Social the way some presidents used the Oval Office microphone: to define enemies, project command, and compress complicated disputes into sharable certainty. This week’s flare-ups moved on two tracks at once, a public dispute with Pope Leo XIV and a backlash over an...
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The EPA Case That Could Revive Nondelegation
Congress passes a law. An agency fills in the operational details. The public feels the impact. And somehow, no one can quite identify the moment when elected lawmakers made the big choice. That, in plain English, is the constitutional itch behind a new push to get the Supreme Court to take a case...
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Kentucky’s Gun-Maker Shield and the Price of Lawsuits
Kentucky is in the middle of a familiar American argument: who gets to set the rules when a national controversy lands on a statehouse desk? This time the spark is HB 78 , a bill the legislature passed and Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed on April 6, 2026 . The National Association for Gun Rights is urging...
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Harvard Sues Over International Student Ban
The federal government has significant power over the people and institutions it regulates. Often, that power shows up as forms, compliance checks, and rules that can change over time. Occasionally, it shows up as a ban. Harvard is suing the Trump administration after it banned the school from...
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Resignations, Not Expulsions
The House of Representatives is not a courtroom. It is not a human resources department, either. But it is a constitutional body with one glaring obligation that rarely gets tested in earnest: the duty to discipline its own members. This week, that duty collided with political reality. Rep. Tony...
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Virginia Gun Sales Spike Ahead of New Controls
One of the easiest ways to see how law influences everyday behavior is to watch what happens right before a rule changes, or might. In Virginia, gun retailers say that is exactly what is happening now: as a slate of proposed gun controls moves through the legislative process, customers are rushing...
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Massachusetts and the Quiet Squeeze on Section 230
Section 230 is famous for what it says in plain English: if you run a website that hosts user content, you usually are not treated as the “publisher or speaker” of what your users post. That protection is not a courtesy. It is the legal architecture that made comment sections, reviews, social...
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Birthright Citizenship and the Sovereignty Question
Every generation finds a new way to ask an old question: who is an American ? Sometimes the question comes dressed as a moral argument. Sometimes it shows up as a budget argument. Lately, it shows up in court as a sovereignty argument, the claim that the United States can only remain a nation if it...
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Trump’s DOJ Keeps a Biden Gun Rule
Presidents campaign like they can flip Washington like a light switch. New team in, old rules out. That story sells. It is also often false. On April 10, the Trump Justice Department kept a Biden-era gun rule in place. Whatever people expected from a change in administration, the immediate result...
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